Functionalized polyolefins

Polyolefins are virtually ubiquitous in everyday life, from consumer food packaging to biomedical applications; therefore, efforts must be made to study catalytic pathways towards the attachment of various functional groups onto polyolefins in order to affect the material's physical properties.

One of the most common way to attach functionality onto a preexisting polymer backbone is through free radical reaction.

[3] When there is a free radical on the polyolefin chain, maleic anhydride[4] can be attached to promote further functionalization.

[5] Though post-functionalization techniques are viable for the insertion of functional groups, harsh conditions must be used since regular non-functionalized polyolefins are highly unreactive.

Acyclic diene metathesis (ADMET) is similar to ROMP in that subsequent hydrogenation is required.

Examples of early transition metal catalysts includes titanium and zirconium complexes.

Early transition metals can easily form oxides; therefore, protection groups, like the use of methylaluminoxane (MAO) due to its Lewis acidity, can be used to prevent side reactions from happening.

Block and graft polyolefin can provide high amount of functional groups onto the polymer chain.

[20] Some disadvantages of this method include the lack of controlled polymerization and the requirement of multi-step mechanisms.

Carbene insertion ^{[

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Tungsten complex catalyzed ring-opening metathesis polymerization ^{[

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ADMET copolymerization with Ru catalyst ^{[

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Copolymer via radical polymerization ^{[

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TMS functionalized polyolefin via Ti complex catalysis ^{[

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End functionalized BBN oxidation ^{[

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